Actually, the best way to reduce carbon emissions is to live like the Amish and disconnect from the grid. However, I don't see that as an alternative lifestyle that most Americans would embrace.Originally posted by Cismontane
Actually, the best way to reduce carbon emissions is to live like the Amish and disconnect from the grid. However, I don't see that as an alternative lifestyle that most Americans would embrace.
Raise the gas tax by a buck or so, index it to inflation PLUS add a nickel or so per gallon each year and the market will take care of the rest.
With that, we'd have production 100 mpg cars in five years, and if the economics of electric cars made sense we'd quickly see the infrastructure developed to fill that market. Trying to have our cake and eat it too through nanny state interventions (CAFE, etc) will never work.
Two wrongs don't necessarily make a right, but three lefts do.
The Nukes here are located very close to the coal burners. This is logical as both are nimbys and take full advantage of the shoreline. Never thought of having a nuke plant that stands on its own without an accompanying coal burner!
We hope for better things; it will arise from the ashes - Fr Gabriel Richard 1805
yep. gotta put all that nimby stuff in one place. Coal burners, nuke turbines, desal plant, prison, homeless shelter, sewage treatment facility, and probably affordable rental housing.. clearly all these unpleasant and undesrable things belong in one place.
Electric cars won't solve the problems of sprawl, over consumption of land, traffic accidents, obesity, etc. If the electricity used to power them is based on renewables, there may be some improvement on that dimension alone.
again, unlikely if you plug the cars in, unless you live in OR and WA (0.15 metric tonnes CO2e/mwh wowee!) and maybe if you live in California (0.35). What the heck is going on with those Cascadians up there? They're always one-uping the rest of us and it's no fair! If you live in CO, UT, WY and MT, you'd better not try to drive a plug in car (0.91.. you'll burn 2x carbon with a plug in car as you would with a traditional gas guzzler). Until we either reduce the carbon intensity of the grid by about 50% nationally or figure out how to increase the efficiency of distributed household level renewables (principally solar PVs and things like ground source pumps) massively, the best car technology is still hybrids and very high fuel efficiency ULEV vehicles.
USDOE stats on carbon intensities of the grid by state region and country may be found here:
http://www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/1605/pdf...0F_r071023.pdf
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